


The Light in March

by oneinspats



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Hugo is like "er...what the fuck are you doing with my beautifully crafted work", I obviously don't know how to use tags, M/M, Purple Prose, Slash, Slow Burn, Vidocq is kicking around because i love him, and I'm like "fuck that.", brigandage, like it's no one's business slow burn, southern france
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-23
Updated: 2013-04-23
Packaged: 2017-12-09 08:14:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/772023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oneinspats/pseuds/oneinspats
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>originally began sticking it up over on Tumblr. Called "Untitled" and "Light in March" over there. </p><p>It's 1799 going into 1800 and Valjean is in Toulon. While there he finds himself meeting a new convict recently bunged in for forgery. This convict has Ideas and hatches a plan to break out. <br/>Meanwhile a new young guard has started to work at the prison. </p><p>Shit proceeds to get real. </p><p>Brigands. Murder. Prison Escapes. Vidocq just existing. Privateers. Private Detectives. Oh my oh my.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [everyone on Tumblr](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=everyone+on+Tumblr).



His mother sells some herbs to a girl from the village. The girl is small with mousy hair, freckled face, workman’s skin. He has seen her from time to time. Leaning against the stone wall that marks the graveyard by the church. There is ivy crawling over sun stained rocks. She is usually smiling and making eyes at the blacksmith’s boy.

Javert does not know what the herbs are for but he does know they cannot be good. Or legal. He is a boy weaned on secret glances. Covert looks. Palmed coin.

When he asks his mother she says that they would solve a problem for the girl. They are saving her, she says. They are going to make tomorrow all right and the day after and the day after.

His mother is washing him in a tin tub outback by the linen. The tub was intended as a traugh for horses. It is now a trough for dirty gypsy boys. He is six and always covered in mud and dust. He even comes out of the tub dirty. He likes to imagine that he could scrub his skin white. White like a proper gentleman’s skin. White like the porcelain dolls in shopkeepers' windows. Not dark like his mother’s. His mother wonders aloud what she will do with him. Her little  _chavo._  Javert does not answer.

‘I am someone they need,’ she continues to explain. She has explained this before. ‘Since we cannot be with our people,’ she spits. ‘We must make our own way, alone. It is not right. But it is what it is. They do not like us, the French, the  _gadjo._ Be me,’ she laughs. ‘They need me.’

‘Why?’ He is a petulant child. His mother indulges it.

‘Who else will they go to for their little problems? A doctor could help but cannot. Or will not. Or both. Sometimes both. Most of the time both. They have knowledge, those doctors, but not will.’ She pulls him out of the water and he stands naked with gooseflesh arms. ‘I find their lost things. I see their future husbands and wives. I heal their sick. I keep evil off their land. I make things go away that they do not want. But, I am not one of them. We are not one of them.’ She is drying his hair with her apron. There is flour on it so his usual black mop is marred with white. She laughs at him. She makes him think of the colour blue.

 

‘Your mother was a witch, wasn’t she?’

Corentin Plourde, named for the saint, is a guard. Like Javert. But older, unlike Javert. Corentin has been in Toulon longer. He has those eyes. Javert knows that one day he will have them as well. They are hard and flint filled - like iron ore in hills or the sheer gravity of crushed sea shells. 

The man, who is more bull, is built with mountains in mind and he knashes his teeth when he speaks. Javert could fit two of himself in the older man’s coat. This amuses him for a moment before he moves on.

He scoffs. Corentin takes it as an insult, muscles bunch. It is a ridge of the Alps along his shoulders.

‘Hardly,’ Javert says. He sidesteps the other guard, straightens his coat and hat. ‘She was too cunning for that.’

‘Gypsy whores can’t be cunning. Tricky, sure. Even sly. Little bitches. Bet you’ve got their criminal stink all over you.’

The boy, for he’s not much older than that, sort of smirks.

‘If you think that then you know nothing.’ He snaps his fingers. ‘Better than the stink of fish. Ask your saint to double your intelligence. It might do you good.’

Corentin turns. He is baring his teeth and Javert thinks, Ah,  _dog._ But then Jean-Del called Platt steps in with an easy smile. He grins at them both. Peace, he says. They both mutter, Yes sir.

‘Javert, go on duty. Cornetin calm down.’

Sometimes the other guards, little men like Larue and Segal, call Corentin  _Poisson Plourde_ and he gets fierce. Platt once said Corentin is one worm short of foaming at the mouth. Or, perhaps better, a hook short of a full catch. But he’s from Brittany, yes? They do things differently up there. For sure.

 

Javert thinks Corentin looks a little like a fish. In a puckered sort of way. Though, he notes, the man is hardly a hermet and so there all saintly similarities end. Shame. Some men have such fodder about them. He thinks he could have fun with Platt, who has a slight limp in his right leg and wears his sleeves long even in summer months. He decides against it. Platt has always been kind to him. If in an inscrutable, distant fashion. If Javert had an older brother, he thinks he would have liked it to have been Platt.

The convicts he is watching are in the Corderie working the treadmills. Teams of four turn wheels which wind the cord into rope for the ships. The Arsenal is cold with frosted window pains. Early December morning chill has worked its way through Javert’s uniform but he ignores it the best he can.

Javert grew up in a small house, if it could be called such, that had no front door. In the summer, no matter. In the winter, a matter, but one his mother had tried to cover with burlap. Snow still snuck in around the edges and coated the floor, their small stools and table. His mother had shown him how to use paper and rags to line his clothes. Sometimes, she would disappear for days at a time and return with firewood, or a few items of clothes, or, better still, a bone or two to make soup. He had never asked. Looking back he knew he should have. He knew he should have known that whatever it was she had been doing, it was probably not legal. Or  _nice._

One of the convicts, the one closest to him this morning, is a big man. He is dark haired, or would be if hair wasn’t cropped short, and leathery and peasant-ish. Some of the guards call him  _le Cric._ Corentin calls him Jean  _le géant_  – though more for his strength and his muscles than his actual height which is not impressive. Platt, who is always correct in all things except his home life and his past, calls him by his number. Javert calls him nothing. Though, sometimes, and only in his head, he refers to the convict as  _le cric._ Because the man  _is_ a jack. A tool to be used by the state for the betterment of the state. But nicknames are inappropriate. They are informal and personal and it would not do to be personal with a convict. When things are personal they necessarily assume the humanity of the one in question.

Convicts are not human.

His mother had called him  _mon petit chou._ He had called his mother nothing. Such stories are old and worn out. He resumes his attention on the convicts.

The one in question is watching Javert as he turns his wheel. He is alone because it would be a waste to have others helping him when he can so clearly make do on his own. The convict has fish eyes, Javert notes. Cold and nothing and just silver-fish eyes followed by a hard nose, a dog-toothed smile. Javert worries his uniform is out of place. Why else would the man be staring? Javert worries that maybe there is something on his face or in his hair.

He mindlessly straightens a cuff.

The prisoner stares at the motion. Javert pretends not to notice. He thinks that the convict’s face is not one he would forget. It is almost biblical.

 

When the lunch bell calls Javert finds himself relieved of his post by Larue who tells him to go see Platt and make himself useful.

Platt is buried under papers when Javert returns to the guardhouse where Platt all but lives. The guard is sucking back a cup of coffee and grumbling about cuts in funding. He begins cursing the Directors beginning with Sieyès then to Gohier and Moulin and Ducos. He throws in Barras for good measure because everyone should curse Barras for good measure. Oh and that slimy one. That one who Robespierre should have knocked off when he had a chance – Talleyrand. Yes. Never liked the looks of him.

With each new name the insults gain in creativity and vulgarity. Platt could make a sailor blush and cross himself.

‘And now, now we have that Corsican. That lap-dog of Barras. Bonaparte. With his Consulate going about pissing all over the place. Just because the man can conquer Italy doesn’t mean who should conquer France as well. What is this? The dark ages? The Roman Empire? We are in the eighteenth century for Saint Joseph’s sake.’ He laughs. There is little humour in it. Sighing he motions Javert in and points to a chair. The boy remains standing. Platt sits back and looks at the younger man with a face that could be described as frank though Javert doesn’t believe it to be so. The lad is fresh-faced and still in that awkward stage of learning how to use his body without stumbling over it.

‘You’re what? Eighteen? Nineteen?’

‘Twenty, sir.’

Platt nods. ‘Still a boy, regardless. How do you find the job?’

‘Fine, sir.’

‘Hm. You must have a stronger opinion than that. You’re a young man with strong opinions, I can see.’

Javert is non-committal. He is trying not to shift his weight. Platt moves on, shuffling papers from pile to pile. He is watching the boy as he does so. The posture is impeccable, though beginning to waver. Face is carefully still but one that shows the boy is still learning how to hide his thoughts. It is a stillness that clearly shows thought. It is a thinking stillness.

‘Why did you become a guard?’ Platt has a small file for each of his men. It has family information, references, a brief biography, and other bits of information the older man deems important. Javert’s, so far, is remarkably empty.

‘It seemed the correct decision at the time.’

Ah, Platt thought. He’s one of those.

‘Come now,’ a bright smile. ‘We none of us have secrets here. It’s a jail, after all. No normal person becomes a guard and so we have our pasts. What’s your story?’

‘That may be true, but, as I said, it seemed the correct decision at the time.’

‘So you had no job, no training, no trade, and found yourself at a crossroads with all paths leading to some exile from society.’ Platt’s smile is unmoved and he sees the tell tale clenching of the boy’s jaw. ‘Hardly a new story. Don’t take anything I say to heart, lad. I like you well enough. Though, give it a few years and I may not.’

‘You’re forthright, sir.’

‘Indeed. You’re in the  _bagne,_ now. Few are forthright here.’

‘May I be, sir?’

The older man spreads his hands, palms up. Sure, sure, if you must.

‘What were you in jail for?’

Ah. Ah. Now the boy’s face is still-still.

‘Was I?’

‘There are signs.’

‘Keen eye you’ve got. Quick mind, too. They’ll get you into trouble so watch them.’ He is shrewd as he regards Javert. ‘I found myself at a crossroads. I went left.’ Now he is gathering up papers.

‘Why would they hire a convict?’

‘Tcha,  _former_ convict.’ He laughs. Javert is still-still. ‘I’ll be frank about your life, sure, but not about mine. Who’s minding the Arsenal?’

‘Larue.’

‘Fine, fine. And it’s “Larue, sir”.’

‘Yes. Sir.’

Platt ducks his head and mutters that Javert is a cheeky bastard, to boot.

‘I want you to relieve Bellard up at the hospital.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And after, back to the Arsenal. Watch out for,’ here Platt glances at a piece of paper. ‘49320. Last name something funny. Like yours. Ah, Vidocq. Con-man, trickster, thief, whore monger. The usual. He’s a sly devil, though. Keeps breaking out.’

‘He’s new, isn’t he?’

‘Yes. Got him in August. Before you arrived. I suppose they’re hoping for this version of hell to break him. Good luck, I say. I’ve seen him. I know the resilient types. If he tries anything funny you tell me. Understood?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Good. Good. Oh,’ this is an after thought. Javert is standing by the door and about to leave. Outside it is cold and bleak. ‘Take that book off of him would you? Get Larue to help if you must. There’s enough gambling in this den without his help.’ 


	2. Banquet of Thieves

The man who is in charge of the guards at Toloun is called Father Mathieu and it is to him that Platt, and all the others, answer. Father Mathieu is a square set man with a square jaw, square hands, cold eyes and a firm, barking laugh. Javert has met him only a few times and isn’t sure the old man likes him much. He calls him  _gitan_ but in such a way Javert is sure that the man means it as a statement of fact rather than insult. Besides, when he was even more of a boy he had long learned that one should not take insult when one is called what one is.

But Father Mathieu still eyes him coldly. More than his usual coldness, that is. Javert isn’t sure if he should make an effort or no. 

Father Mathieu, whose surname is unknown, informs Platt that the prisoners are to have wood to make toys. December cold makes men restless and restless men turn to unsavoury means of entertainment.

‘ _Le Renard_ has been taken in,’ Platt spits. He and Corentin are sharing a pipe by the west quay and watching as shadowed figures of prisoners move across the grand ring. Javert is with them but itching to be away. He finds himself idle in the prison and it does not suite him.

‘I ‘faith,’ mutters Corentin. ‘It’s that new one. That  _soldier,_ pah!’ He spits. It lands near Javert’s boot. ‘Don’t let that one open his mouth I say. Words melt you like butter. Dressed in prison garb but still playing the angel. Old game, I’m surprised  _le renard_ is taken in with it.’

Platt nods, takes the pipe back and offers it to Javert. ‘Have a little, will do you good.’

‘T’aint against your faith.’ Corentin adds helpfully.

Javert asks coolly, ‘And what faith would that be, pray?’

The older guard snarls, ‘you barely fill your uniform but you play the man.’ He snorts. ‘I’ll be laughing when you stumble over your own feet. Father Mathieu shouldn’t have hired you.’ He pats Javert on the cheek. ‘Still a boy. I'm surprised you've lasted this long.’

Platt watches the boy’s shoulders as they stiffen then relax. Javert regards Corentin with a mix of pity and ill concealed disdain. Platt offers his pipe to the other guard. He decides that perhaps the waters should be smoothed. Winter months are hard for more than just the weather.

‘It’s just as I said when he came, and then again a month ago –‘

‘What, that the boy’s scrawny?’

‘ _Poisson Plaurde.’_

‘Why you mangy, little cur –‘

‘Gentlemen! Peace.’ Platt looks between them. His expression is one of long suffering exacerbation. Javert manages to appear contrite. Corentin just snorts. ‘As I was saying, it’s Vidocq. He’s got Father Mathieu wrapped around his little finger.’

Corentin nods along. He is dumping out the pipe and inspecting the bowl. He declares, ‘I even saw old Father Renard speaking to that bastard the other day. Do you know he didn’t mention a cudgel once?’

‘ _Sacre,’_ the other guards laugh.

‘I wasn’t aware he was capable of that,’ Javert snorts. ‘I keep getting speeches from him on how to properly beat down a prisoner.’

There is an unreadable smile from Platt. ‘Just the beginning of many to come, I assure you. Welcome to Toulon.’

They part as the evening canon is fired from the  _Amiral._ Javert crosses towards the south quay and stops to watch as the prisoners are moved in twilight to their cells. They are fresh from the Arsenal and sweating despite the cold. Javert remembers winters to the north; in the hills and the cold blowing down on the Aurillacs. The small towns of Pierrefort and Paulhac he remembers as a series of barns and stables and the smell of straw and the howl of winter winds. He remembers them as a series of tales, of parts of stories woven by his mother in the pitch dark of mountain nights. He thinks Toulon heaven in comparison.

The prisoners are singing. There are no discernible words, just a hum and the rhythm of their chains as they walk. They are finishing the dregs of a dirge. It is one of the few noises by the waterside. One of the men in the line turns and looks at Javert. It is the same one who had begun to watch him in the  _Corderie. Le Cric._

Javert is learning the different watching looks convicts give guards. There is the bald faced hate, the seeping pity, the contempt. There is also mild curiosity and envy, mindless gazing of someone not truly seeing what is in front of them. The eyes hanging in the spaces between. The one Valjean directs at him is intense. This one is a watching gaze. A fire-of-two-eyes-in-the-back-of-your-neck gaze. Javert stares in return. He notes that the man’s hair needs a trim. He catalogues the features and reorganizes them in his head. He does this with prisoners he wants to remember; prisoners who are good enough to escape and may need to be identified. His mother had once said that disguises are easy enough – all people ever see are hair and clothes. They do not see the face behind them. So Javert has taken to looking at  _everything_. He hoards the information. He analyses it, turns it over, picks it apart and puts it back together. He is nothing if not thorough.

As the prisoners disappear into the main building Javert tells himself that he is doing this for this particular convict, this Valjean, because there is guile behind angry eyes. There is the familiar clever cunning amidst the hate. He thinks on the muscles, the curve of the shoulders, the hidden jaw line which he is sure would be imposing if ever freed from the beard. He tries not to think, There is a man who could have been Great had life been different.

But justice must win out. For what would the world be without it?

   
  


The next morning Javert arrives in the wood shop to hear Father Mathieu snarling at a pair of prisoners whose hands are at each other’s throats. There is a claustrophobia that permeates prisons. It’s a cabin fever effect of seeing the same people day in and out and knowing how they piss and what their snores sound like. It is the same for the guards as for the prisoners.

One of the convicts in the brawl is a man called Pantaragat who is in for robbery and forgery. The other is Valjean and Javert scowls as the men are pulled apart. He thinks he sees Corentin with his angry bared teeth in each of the men and mutters,  _dogs._ Father Mathieu spins on his heel, turning with a flourish admirable for the bulky body, catches sight of Javert and his lips are a grim line.

‘Boy.’ He calls. A jerking hand motion to join him. Javert obliges. ‘Keep an eye on these two today. They’re itching for blood. What about, I couldn’t say. Muttering to each other in that argot of theirs then suddenly fists. Had to beat them apart myself. A well placed cudgel teaches better than anything else. Larue will be here as well, maybe Segal later.’

The prisoners are shuffling back into place around a large table. There is wood and tools scattered across it. Javert can see one whittling what looks to be a small horse. Toys. Father Mathieu follows his gaze and gives a firm nod.

‘Honest labor reaps honest benefits. And it keeps them busy. We added 24601 to separate him from Bisson, 2984. They were planning something. Could smell the scheme as soon as I saw them.’

At the benches Javert can see the bowed head of Pantagarat; the shifting eyes of Vidocq, the apparent current bane of Platt’s life; the permanent scowl of Valjean the thief. He memorizes them as they work. He thinks that if the roof fell in, as in the old Roman story, he’d be able to place them all. He would say – The head of table sat Vidocq, sly eyed but cherubic smiled. To his right was Valjean, called  _le cric,_ who spoke little and never laughed. To Vidocq’s left is agile Pantagarat who didn’t maths so much as saw numbers arranging themselves in his mind’s eye. Then on down either side of the work bench. And outside of them is himself, Father Mathieu the old  _renard,_ and Larue who is by the door. Segal in the hall. And all of us cut off from outside by walls and chains and gates. It would be the fall of a banquet of thieves. 

**Author's Note:**

> This stemmed from a Tumblr conversation where it was noticed that Vidocq and Valjean would have spent half a year in prison together from August 1799 to March 1800. 1800 is also the year of Valjean's first escape attempt so...
> 
> Javert wouldn't have been there until 1803ish I think so I'm fudging with the timeline. Deal with it. I regret nothing.


End file.
